JOBS – Just Obama Blowing Smoke

This acronym was shared with me this morning and while I smiled, I had a hard time finding much to laugh about. I’ve got a job – heck, I’ve got several, but that’s not the reason why. I’ve read a few articles and blogs from pundits who seem to enjoy tearing into the administration for the lack of economic surplus that all Americans would love to see. Through it all I find myself shaking my head, annoyed.

Am I saying Obama has it figured out? Hell no! Then again, neither do I or anyone else who isn’t a maybe of an ultra-secret organization that plots the rise and fall of the world’s economics for their own amusement and gain. It’s easy to play couch-critic though and poke fun at what’s not working. Now let me take a turn at poking fun at the fun-pokers.

Donald Trump, I believe, made an assertion a while back while he was playing a joke and saying he might run for President. He stated that the gov’t should be run by businessmen and women, not politicians. I agree with that wholeheartedly. Take the current and past attempts at boosting economic growth through potential job creation. The gov’t offers money to businesses, under a variety of different methods and with a variety of stipulations. The problem is that businesses are run by people who got where they are because they are smart, not because they are patriotic and because they want to help others out. That does not mean they fall short in either category (patriotism or altruism), only that their jobs and their responsibilities dictate they must make certain decisions. And what is the top priority of any business? Making money.

Given any opportunity a business is going to do a cost benefits analysis and consider the rate of return. On top of that, they are going to evaluate any risks they must take from a conservative position. After all, times have been hard recently and even if they’ve been given a blank check today, that doesn’t mean tomorrow things aren’t going to be worse. Long term and short term goals must be considered.

So when the government says here’s some money, go spend it, and they hope it’s done in a way that will increase jobs. A company will probably find a more efficient way of optimizing their business – after all, labor is arguably the single most controllable facet of most businesses. The mantra of the times is to work smarter, not harder, and to do more with less. As employees we show our worth by multi-tasking and being able to perform better and better in spite of the adversities thrown at us. We’re our own worst enemy, but the alternative is to be fired for poor job performance.

I’m hardly qualified to offer an explanation on the country’s economic condition, yet if a gun was held to my head (or a blog put in front of me), I’d say that I think it’s a slow recovery process. Everybody, from businessperson to guy on the street, feels violated and wary. Our financial significant others have been sleeping around on us and we just found out, so we’re leery of trusting again. Post traumatic stress of the economic kind. We don’t want to put money into something for fear that we’ll lose the money and be left with nothing, and that includes buying a new car or house or toys for our kids at Christmas time. The only fix is healing over time and seeing a steady and reliable positive trend. A few economic surges aren’t going to do it – we’re smart enough to know every climb has a downhill slope on the other side.

So, to draw a conclusion to a confusing post, don’t blame the administration for jobs not bursting forth, blame ourselves. We’re all leery and we’ve got every right to be.